Why is this here..

A Lead Odyssey is about my hobby, collecting, painting and playing with toy soldiers. It will cover the various rulesets I use, the figures I am painting (very slowly), and some games. Thanks to Harry Pearson for the Achtung Schweinehundreference. The uniform jacket in the picture was adapted from a safari suit, the weapon is a wooden sub-machine gun made by me and my dad. Cool eh?

I play a range of scales, rules and periods.. scales are anything from 6mm, through 15mm to 28mm for little men, but I also use 1/1200 for Napoleonic Naval, and 1/3000 for Pre-Dreadnought period Naval.

My tastes are eclectic, but I have avoided most 'Fantasy' Games for a few years, as I couldn't get into the usual suspects for Fantasy Battles, and didn't have a decent group to play role-playing style games.

Saturday, 19 March 2016

Back at the club - and the 6mm War of the Spanish Succession (Marlburian period if you want to be Anglo-centric). Again, Nick and I faced off - approximately 150 points each. As I left bases in the box, I realised that I must have had a fair bit of a points advantage in the first game, at least 15 or so, which was at least a 10% edge.

Nick was featuring as 'tired general' coming directly off a flight, so I grabbed the club terrain tiles, tried to make the terrain interesting, and gave him choice of long edge on the 150cm x 90cm table. (5 x 3 foot).

Opening

British are on the left, French on the right. The British have loaded the flank with German firelock brigades, their horse are concentrated there as well. On the British right, a small village obstructs a straight forward fight.

View from the British Right

The French have horse (well in 'Horse, Foot & Guns' - 'Pistols') massed on their left, and a lot of foot.

View from the French left

The 'thin red line' in the distance, you can just see French dragoons and foot on the French right.

View from the British left

In front of the British you can see a sunken lane, which became a key feature.

French Left

The French left never really got into the game, struggling with enclosures and buildings.

French Centre

The French centre, lovely flags and detail by Nick. I really like the way he has varied the officers and drummers positioning to add colour and movement. I will be stealing this idea when I do my own French army.

And the engagement is on!

At the far end the German firelocks are pushing through the village on the French right, the British assault on the sunken lane is in full swing, and in the centre, Marlborough is having to reposition brigades to shore up his centre, after Blood's regiment is blown away by a close assault (the brigade routed and could not be rallied).

The French defenders of the sunken road, dragoons and firelocks..

The sunken road was backed by a wooded hill. This created real problems for the British. Their horse charged the dragoon lining the road - which we treated as an 'ELF' or linear feature that added a bonus to the defenders. The dragoons then returned through the woods and started taking potshots at the Horse. Unable to respond the horse were withdrawn and two Irish brigades brought up to try and displace the defenders.

Crunch point

The French assault has stalled in the centre with heavy casualties from the British foot, while the defenders of the sunken lane have a problem with German firelocks turning their flank (foreground). A brigade of French dragoons entered the village to try and hold up the Germans, but were bundled ouy and forced to withdraw into the woods.

British assault the lane with infantry backed by Horse

This became an expensive proposition for the British.

The end

Casualties in the French centre caused Villars to end the engagement while in the foreground, despite being outnumbered, the French dragoons still hold the woods as the British cavalry reform behind their screening infantry.

Overall, another cracking game. The French firelocks really struggle against the British/Dutch infantry that are superior in a firefight. The French left never really got into the game, and the French dragoons did sterling work on the French right.

Not sure what the answer is for the French. In some respects they have command advantages (they have an Army HQ as opposed to the Allies 'Command Party' so they have a much greater command radius). Massing of artillery, use of heavy artillery, and pressing all along the line, using the press forward to get into combat might even things up a bit.

Wednesday, 16 March 2016

Now that I have actually completed a project, I thought I would show the results - Overall, these were very very quick and easy to paint, looking at the pictures you can see that they are mostly just 'dots' or 'blobs' of colour, with the exception of the hat lace. The 'wargamer's view' (below) is how they will mostly be viewed, so I am very happy with that. Baccus have now recast the War of the Spanish Succession range, so the latest sculpts will form my Imperials and French regiments when I build matching opponents.

Wednesday, 9 March 2016

As I will shortly be moving - I have compiled a long list of figures that will either have to be sold, packed up for shipping or loaned out.

I have identified the ones I definitely will be hanging on to, but the rest I am happy to put online and see what offers I get. I have not set a definitive price, though where it can be calculated, I have tried to work out a rough 'raw lead' price as an indicator.

I have included 4 pages on the blog where I have put up details and pics in 4 main categories:

A few things have now sold - noted below:

6mm WW2, mainly GHQ, with several armies still in original packaging as well as fully painted ones:

As always.. hundreds of odds and ends. Add a comment if you have any questions or would be interested in more information. I am based in Australia, so postage elsewhere is likely to be exorbitant, or I can arrange pickup in Canberra.

Thursday, 3 March 2016

So - 6 years after we originally planned, Nick and I finally managed to get our 6mm Baccus War of the Spanish Succession forces onto a table at the club.

We originally intended to use the Polemos rules, but as we didn't really have the time to familiarise ourselves with these, and a new edition is scheduled, we decided to give Phil Barker's 'Horse, Foot & Guns' a try. Copies are available free online, though we both had a copy of the Lulu print, and as we are experienced DBMM players, the mechanics are very familiar.

I have to say - it was a gripping game, played on the club terrain, and I was very happy with how the armies looked in 6mm. Really gave a great visual impression. Scaling is an issue for me though, as technically, the bases should each represent a brigade, but I had scaled the army at each base to a regiment (battalion) - theoretically, I could go back and repaint some as Dutch or other allied forces, but I really don't want to.

So here's how it looked... sorry, I didn't take more photographs, but the game was too much fun to break it up.

The British army confronts the French forces

Closer up

The table French on the left, a further British command arrived to attack the French right

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